


The Bearer of Bad News

by canufeelthemagictonight



Category: Escape the Night (Web Series), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Abduction, Anger, Bad News, Desperation, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kidnapping, Missing Scene, Police, Promises, Questioning, Worry, families, many questions but no answers, my OC is very frazzled, no EtN spoilers here folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-13 13:58:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16019351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canufeelthemagictonight/pseuds/canufeelthemagictonight
Summary: "A car, a van, a skateboard, a motorcycle, a bicycle, and a pair of roller skates." Maddie rattles off the information from her notecards. "All together, abandoned in an empty field. Nine sets of fingerprints were found on these vehicles. We scouted the area for days, but we couldn't find anyone."Here comes the bad part.She swallows and stares at the floor. "All of the evidence suggests that this might be another mass kidnapping situation."How do you tell nine families that their worst fears have come true? Officer Madeline "Maddie" Perkins is about to find out.An Escape the Night one-shot.





	The Bearer of Bad News

As she stares into a sea of anxious faces, Officer Madeline "Maddie" Perkins wonders who in the LAPD she pissed off to get _this_ job. _A mass kidnapping. The third in three years. The last two ended with most of them dead. And I have to be the one to break the news to their families._ She can only assume that Police Chief Beck secretly has it out for her.

Her eyes settle on a young, bespectacled, clearly terrified woman in the front row. The woman huddles together with an older lady and three men of varying ages. All five of them are clearly trying to be brave, but failing. Two rows behind them, a young man tearfully displays a photograph of a dark-haired girl dressed in black, as if Maddie hasn't already memorized the faces of the nine YouTubers who vanished last week.

Maddie clears her throat and begins. "Thank you all for joining me. We've looked into the disappearances of your loved ones, and..." She bites her lip. She doesn't know how to continue this. "We found...something."

"You found something?" The bespectacled girl perks up. "What? What did you find?"

"A car, a van, a skateboard, a motorcycle, a bicycle, and a pair of roller skates." Maddie rattles off the information from her notecards. "All together, abandoned in an empty field. Nine sets of fingerprints were found on these vehicles. We scouted the area for days, but we couldn't find anyone." _Here comes the bad part._ She swallows and stares at the floor. "All of the evidence suggests that this might be another mass kidnapping situation."

For a moment, all is still in the station. Then, a Filipino woman bursts into tears, and the room erupts into a chorus of desperate shouting. 

"Please calm down." Maddie's head and heart hurt. "Please, everyone, calm down. We're doing everything we can. Our search-and-rescue teams are combing the city as we speak..."

An angry voice rises over the commotion. "You _said_ this would never happen again!"

"Sir..."

"Your people said, back when this happened for the _second_ time, that this would never happen again. You said so on TV. And now you're telling us that it's happened again? To _our_ kids?" The voice belongs to a Mexican man in the back of the room. His arm is around a hysterical woman who can only be his wife, and he glares at Maddie as if _she's_ responsible for the disappearances. "I don't want your 'we're doing everything we can,' Officer! I want my son back!"

Maddie wants to sink into the floor and end this awful conversation. "Sir, the LAPD is committed to this case. We're doing our best to find all the abductees and return them to their homes."

"And what if you can't?" another woman demands to know. "What if they're gone forever? What if I never see Nikita again?"

A brunette in the second row rocks back and forth, hugging herself, while her parents (they _must_ be her parents) whisper frantically to each other. Maddie can't tell if the brunette is crying "no" or "Ro."

"We'll find them," Maddie insists, but she doesn't know if they will.

"Can I ask a question?" This from a petite woman, also in the second row, whose voice is frightened but calm at the same time. Maddie winces when she notices that this new speaker is pregnant. "Does Joey Graceffa have anything to do with this?"

Maddie blinks. "Joey Graceffa? No. No, ma'am, he's still missing."

"Oh." The woman frowns. "It's just that he survived the first massacre, and he went missing around the same time as the second one happened, and they still haven't found his body. My husband was curious about it, before he..." She can't finish her sentence. "Please. Tell me you'll find them."

The word "please" echoes around the room like a Ping-Pong ball. It's on everyone's lips. It's in everyone's eyes. Maddie shrinks into her notes, trying not to think about all the bodies they've found over the past two years, or all the broken families they've witnessed. She doesn't want these people to lose their children, their spouses, their siblings, their friends...but she can't ignore the facts. It's unlikely that the LAPD will be able to save everyone.

Hell, the LAPD wasn't even able to save the last two groups. It's always that weird organization that sweeps in, rescues the survivors, and recovers the bodies. What are they called again? The Society of Something?

She faces the families, takes a deep breath, and says all that she can say.

"We'll try."

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed that. Don't know why you would, but hope you did.


End file.
